That everything will be as good as it is today. Or was, as the kids and I drove home in the dark from Costco, everyone happy, everyone together, just happy for no reason. Contented.
We spent yesterday walking to the park, seeing kid friends, and with no toys or playground in sight, the kids actually played on the grass, lined up their bodies and made a tunnel that Lilly crawled under. Emma making her list of people she wants to invite to her birthday party, and putting "the Lakers Team" under "maybe." Came home to Barry making the street smell like garlic with his garlic bread, all the kids eating spaghetti the windows foggy with steam, then later we still have food so we invite the girl with the horse in our yard to eat. She works at a prop house and she has to write J Edgar Hoover's diary as a prop for a movie they're making. She didn't know Hoover liked to dress in women's clothing. In those days, she said, I guess if you were gay it didn't matter, you just got married and had children anyway. I said, well, that's what I did.
Today the kids kept begging to see their friends but then friends were busy seeing other friends so I said, we're going to do something even better. All three sets of eyes looked at me with hope. We're gonna make an obstacle course, I said without believing I could do it, but hoping they couldn't see through my weak rah rah enthusiasm. They'd been having a revival of rollerblades for the past two days, and it was like 80 degrees in January, so we were outside, so I set up a little obstacle course with a watering hole, some hula hoops, a soccer goal, and about seven other "stations" they had to rush around to. Lilly just played in the water, and Nathan and Emma loved running to and from everything long enough for me to decide to go get the video camera. By the time I got back and turned it on, they were sick of the obstacle course. Then they left and I went to clean it all up. Which I complained about as we ate in the living room and tried to play a game of Parcheesi which got interuppted by Lilly screaming, I thought, from Nathan running over her toe with his roller blades, but really she had sprayed Binaca into her eye. Ten minutes of washing the eye out as she howled and I laid there with her on the bed wondering if we were heading to the Emergency Room and she won't open her eye and Nathan saying She looks like Helen Keller and Emma saying that's rude and then miracle she's fine again. And her eye is minty fresh.
The game is still out on the table, and I believe Emma is still winning, although Hank may have moved a few pieces in his attempt to find any food left over out there.
Nathan and I sat on the front porch and I shaved his hair shorter so he looks less like himself and more like a Marine, but with his short blonde hair, and furry back from the hair falling down, he looked like my little brother for a second and I felt happy, having this boy who is growing up and remembering that other boy who used to be in my life, a big part of my life. Felt like he was here, and it felt happy.
We bounced on the trampoline and I looked for eggs but nobody laid out there so I had a firm talk with the chickens, who I don't think were listening, even though I mentioned pot, stew, and You Taste Good Too, you know.
Then we headed to Costco with a stop in the dark at Penske, the closest parking lot to our house that is empty and hilly so the kids could roll on their rollerblades, while Lilly and I ran around them. Then Lilly and I looked through the mail we had picked up on the way out in the car and there was the package of Tall Pants that I got to order from my parents for Christmas, and look, pants that go all the way down my legs without stopping, what an amazing trick that is. Actual girl pants that fit me. Parents are awfully helpful, also an amazing trick.
Then the shopping and the home in the car ride, that I mentioned, dark, kids, a Barbie movie on Lilly's lap singing music, it doesn't matter where we're going, I feel buoyed by these babies and this life, usually so busy I forget to see I am doing something, by being important to three people. They're good company. So I have hope for tomorrow.
Home at 8, way late, Nathan tell us oh he needs a book for his biography tomorrow. At 8 at night, on MLK day. We'll have to go to the library tomorrow. It's all going to be okay, I tell him. Like MLK (his day today), I have a dream.
